Conventionally, in production facilities for semiconductor devices and so on, transport containers that contain works such as a semiconductor substrate are sequentially transported between multiple processing units while being held by overhead carriages (transport devices) that travel along a traveling rail provided near the ceiling of a facility.
For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-25427 discloses a transport device that transports works to processing units while traveling between the processing units in a clean room. The transport device includes an elevating unit that is provided on a horizontal movement unit and vertically moves a work holding unit for holding a work (enclosed container), transferring the works between the work holding unit and the processing units.
In the transport device of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-25427, the work holding unit includes a work holding part extended in a channel shape to two sides of a work (enclosed container). The work holding unit holds the work (enclosed container) with opposed hands provided on the lower ends of two sides of the work holding part so as to hold the bottom of the work.
However, the transport device of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-25427 is configured to transport enclosed containers (transport containers) of the same shape and thus cannot always transport containers having varying shapes or sizes. Thus, particularly in the downstream process of a semiconductor device manufacturing process, transport containers of varying shapes or sizes need to be transported and thus a device configuration (e.g., the configuration of a container holding unit) disadvantageously needs to be changed depending on the shapes or sizes of transport containers.
Moreover, only a few transport containers used in the downstream process of the semiconductor device manufacturing process include popping preventing members (e.g., lids for closing the transport containers) for preventing stored works from popping out of the transport containers. Thus, such a popping preventing member needs to be additionally provided on the transport device, disadvantageously leading to a complicated device configuration.
An object of the present invention is to provide a transport device that can transport containers of varying shapes or sizes without changing the device configuration and prevent a work from popping out of a transport container with a simple device configuration.